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Personality types (information, lack of)
5 years ago
[For anyone who dislikes or despises personality tests that allocate people a number or several capital letters and/or a moniker and celebrity name, and for those who consider them similar to horoscopes or "little more than an elaborate Chinese fortune cookie," my FA Profile and all my FA Journals give plenty of information for you to make your own conclusions about my personality.]
Overview:
I'm going to start this Journal about 'personality types' by discussing my own motivations and then proceed to some disclaimers, rather than immediately 'jumping' into raw information (or any information, LOL). My interest in personality types has at least four aspects: 1) to understand myself better, 2) to understand others better and be able to empathize, 3) to improve my interactions with others and interpersonal relationships, 4) to be able to discuss personalities in a commonly understood and systematic manner.
Boring Details:
1) Understanding myself: Since I seem to be a rather uncommon personality type in most of the systems I have studied (e.g. MBTI: INTJ, 2-4% of population) reading about the different types is helpful to me since it lets me know that I am not alone in how I see the world and that even if I'm not "normal" (e.g. MBTI: xSxJ types are ~50% of the population) I don't inherently have a Personality Disorder or other psychiatric problem just because I am different than the typical person I might meet on the street or behind the counter at a business. Also, since personalities similar to my type are frequently used as fictional villains and I can actually relate to how those characters 'see' the world, it is helpful to put things in perspective and get a dose of realism - in most systems all of the personality types have good and not so good characteristics and some of history's most 'evil' people have been from the more emotional/empathic types.
2) Understanding others: Studying personality typing systems helps me to recognize that other people perceive and interpret the world differently and may subjectively experience the same (or similar) events in a very different manner than I do. Since my personality type(s) tend to be logical and analytical and rather poor at empathy, I have to approach the latter from a logical and analytical viewpoint and the various personality typing systems provide a structure to help me with that. Consider it a 'crutch' for someone whose empathy isn't reliable.
3) Interpersonal relations: I want to know how to productively interact with other people - to determine how I need to modify my own communication style to accommodate others' and also to determine what sorts of people I will be likely to have pleasant successful interactions or relationships with and be able to quickly identify those people... and perhaps more importantly to be able to avoid or cope with the others. From my personal experience, there are clearly certain patterns of interaction and information exchange that are more productive with different types/categories/groups of people. Typology can provide a framework/system that helps to explain and predict that. For instance I know that I can have difficulty dealing with MBTI: xSxJ traditionalists, especially when they are intolerant and hold beliefs that have no rational basis, so there are certain kinds of organizations where those sorts of people tend to congregate that it is better off for everyone involved if I just avoid.
4) Communicate economically: IMHO a large part of the utility of any personality typing system is that it gives people the ability to describe someone or themselves in a very succinct and systematized manner (I find that the descriptive utility may exceed the predictive utility). Otherwise we might have to use examples that are even more poorly defined (and often highly judgemental) such as "he's a nerd" or "he's a rocket scientist" or "she has the attention span of a gnat" or "she's like..." <some TV or book character that you've never heard of because your interests are totally different than the speaker; repeat until a common reference example is found or until someone runs out of patience or stamina>. Reading my FA Profile text and a few of my longer Journals would probably allow someone to 'understand' me as an individual better than the brief labels that are allocated by the various systems, but reading all that material would probably take someone an hour (and a LOT of patience if they are very different from my type) and it takes up quite a bit of space, compared to saying that according to the MBTI I am an "INTJ" or in Socionics I am probably a "LII", or "1001" for the ultimate in binary geekery that I've seen in a system. However, I'm not going to list my personality type as "1001" on my FA homepage because that wouldn't be very helpful for most people and the purpose of listing my four letter type is to... wait for it... communicate economically.
Comments and Disclaimers:
In general, most of the personality type systems are designed to describe 'normal' behaviors, they are not psychiatric diagnosis tools to identify 'abnormal' or clinical behaviors. With a lot (perhaps all) of the systems and types a person's culture, education, choice of ethics, philosophy, politics, profession, interests, intelligence, etc. can make a significant difference in how the type is expressed; 'personality' is very complex and multi-faceted. All the personality type systems are MODELS of reality, they aren't reality; they're all simplistic for describing something as complex as an organic neural net and thus present only partial truths and generalizations. The design of the systems themselves are inherently limited by how typical humans take in, process and remember information, for instance 2 to 5 factors and/or 4 to 32 'stereotypes' or 'archetypes' are about the practical limits for a system that is going to be understandable and useful to a normal human. While someone could produce a system that has two dozen factors and/or eight thousand 'stereotypes' (or eight billion, or eight hundred trillion), it wouldn't be especially helpful for communicating any useful information to other humans (however for AI's that may be more useful).
IMHO none of the systems I've encountered are perfect and some fit certain people better than others, in many systems I've found that listing my top few choices among the various 'stereotypes' or 'archetypes' can be more useful than just listing my top one result. I also haven't encountered a system that involves some form of self-report test or evaluation by another person that is so utterly random that it is essentially "a Chinese fortune cookie" or the equivalent of a horoscope based on birth time/date/season/year or perhaps the letters in someone's given name, in any system with a dozen or so stereotypes that are properly differentiated from each other there will be a few that resemble me and a few that are totally unlike me. I'm not a zealot for any particular system. I've found that it is helpful to be familiar with more than one system (don't learn just one) because that makes me better aware of the strengths and weaknesses of different systems and encourages me to not rely too much on any particular one.
Just because I use the terminology of a system does NOT mean that I believe everything that may be associated with that system, for instance some system (or particular adherents of a system) may claim that the personality traits it measures are dichotomies rather than continuum, or perhaps that they are inborn and unchangeable, or conversely that personality traits are entirely behaviors/habits that can be changed; my use of the terminology of a system may simply be an attempt to communicate in a mutually understood manner that does not involve trying to reference popular celebrities.
My Humors:
Since the field of personality typing dates back to the 'Four Humors' described by the Greek physician Hippocrates (~460–370BC) which would become the Humorism of ancient and medieval medicine, I thought I'd become a hypocrite and list four humors of my own invention:
'Socratestein': (Possibly pronounced Sok-ra-tuh-stein) A sarcastic 'type' name for people who want to endlessly debate the meanings of the words used by any system (e.g. what is 'extroverted' or 'neurotic'). The name of this 'type' is formed by the combination of the names Socrates (the ancient Greek philosopher who was a contemporary of Hippocrates and got himself executed in 399BC for being a jerk like this and "impiety and corrupting the youth") and Ludwig Wittgenstein (an Austrian philosopher who wrote an entire book that 'proved' that discussing abstract words and philosophical propositions was meaningless in any language). Requesting a definition is reasonable and questioning the meaning of the words for a while is one thing, but endlessly questioning, arguing, and debating about them is another (although ”that depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is”). Socrates demonstrated and Wittgenstein 'proved' that words about abstract concepts are impossible to define. Basically this is someone who is an aggressive, combative skeptic (or perhaps a Pyrrhonist). IMHO, the best response may be to tell them to read Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus and either refute it or comply with it. Hypothesis: This may have a statistical correlation to the MBTI: NT temperament (especially xNTP) and possibly to hip measurement. It might also be a tactic used by narcissistic know-it-alls to attack and belittle other people's knowledge or opinions, since it works on any abstract subject.
'Snowflayke': (Possibly pronounced Snow-flake) A completely unique and sui generis person who is in a category by themselves. A very sarcastic 'type' for all of those people who don't want to be typed because they think that they are completely unique and don't want to be 'pigeonholed' or categorized in any manner based on any factor in any system -- so why not categorize them all together. A common characteristic of this 'type' is that they start whining and complaining (or silently sulking) almost as soon as any personality typing system is mentioned. Some of them may hold the belief that being 'typed' will somehow harm or change them, sort of like that idea about how someone taking a photograph of you will 'steal your soul'. Hypothesis: This may have a statistical correlation to the MBTI: NF temperament (especially xNFP) and possibly to water content... or to narcissism.
'Psychoartist': (Possibly pronounced S-eye-ko-ar-teeest) Not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but a psychoarteest. Someone who suggests that only a highly trained and experienced professional (typically themselves and any other professionals who agree with them, but not highly trained professionals who don't agree with them) is qualified to discuss 'personality' or make any recommendations to people. I may be unqualified to have any opinion on the subject but IMHO that is taking psychology out of the realm of science and making it an art form, and I don't have any desire to go to a 'postmodern industrial psychoartist' for recommendations on how to live my life. Yeah, my sarcasm is dripping here or perhaps that is just an excess of black bile, maybe I should go donate platelets again to get rid of some of that. Hypothesis: This may have a strong statistical correlation to the MBTI: N and J preferences and possibly to the number of letters following their names and those of their references, or maybe to their potential score on the Narcissism Personality Inventory.
'Skeptypical': (Possibly pronounced S-kept-type-ic-al) A less sarcastic 'type' that desribes anyone who is skeptical of all personality typing systems, which may be due to knowledge of the difficulty in repeating social psychology research. Hypothesis: This may have a statistical correlation to the MBTI: NT temperament and inversely correlated with belief in the supernatural and how frequently they read horoscopes.
'Ad Hominem': Not a 'type', this is the name of a logical fallacy (Google it for examples). Applies to anyone who wants to discuss the characteristics of the PEOPLE who created a system, or of those who use or reference a system, rather than discuss the system itself. Since it is a logical fallacy its use in a critique is generally considered a very weak argument that indicates the lack of any better or valid argument and a lack of professionalism (or a surfeit of elitism). To be charitable, some of the people who do this may be attempting to point out the philosophical difference between Truth and Knowledge (a branch of philosophy called epistemology).
[The main reason for this Journal (other than to make 'type junkies' smile or giggle) is that the nuclear family that I was born into contains individuals displaying several of the four humors I describe above, which has resulted in me being nervous and defensive about discussing the issue of personality, personality traits, personality tests, or personality types without first making excessive disclaimers in an attempt to avoid the last item above being applied to me as well. Since I listed my personality types according to several systems on my FA Profile page, creating this Journal gave me something to link to that helps better explain my thoughts about using such systems.]
Summary and Conclusions:
TL;DR -- Personality typing is difficult and possibly meaningless. The author is a jackassal. Nothing to see here, move along. This is not the Journal you are looking for.
Next Steps:
My next Journal on this subject may actually contain information about particular personality types and tests.
Overview:
I'm going to start this Journal about 'personality types' by discussing my own motivations and then proceed to some disclaimers, rather than immediately 'jumping' into raw information (or any information, LOL). My interest in personality types has at least four aspects: 1) to understand myself better, 2) to understand others better and be able to empathize, 3) to improve my interactions with others and interpersonal relationships, 4) to be able to discuss personalities in a commonly understood and systematic manner.
Boring Details:
1) Understanding myself: Since I seem to be a rather uncommon personality type in most of the systems I have studied (e.g. MBTI: INTJ, 2-4% of population) reading about the different types is helpful to me since it lets me know that I am not alone in how I see the world and that even if I'm not "normal" (e.g. MBTI: xSxJ types are ~50% of the population) I don't inherently have a Personality Disorder or other psychiatric problem just because I am different than the typical person I might meet on the street or behind the counter at a business. Also, since personalities similar to my type are frequently used as fictional villains and I can actually relate to how those characters 'see' the world, it is helpful to put things in perspective and get a dose of realism - in most systems all of the personality types have good and not so good characteristics and some of history's most 'evil' people have been from the more emotional/empathic types.
2) Understanding others: Studying personality typing systems helps me to recognize that other people perceive and interpret the world differently and may subjectively experience the same (or similar) events in a very different manner than I do. Since my personality type(s) tend to be logical and analytical and rather poor at empathy, I have to approach the latter from a logical and analytical viewpoint and the various personality typing systems provide a structure to help me with that. Consider it a 'crutch' for someone whose empathy isn't reliable.
3) Interpersonal relations: I want to know how to productively interact with other people - to determine how I need to modify my own communication style to accommodate others' and also to determine what sorts of people I will be likely to have pleasant successful interactions or relationships with and be able to quickly identify those people... and perhaps more importantly to be able to avoid or cope with the others. From my personal experience, there are clearly certain patterns of interaction and information exchange that are more productive with different types/categories/groups of people. Typology can provide a framework/system that helps to explain and predict that. For instance I know that I can have difficulty dealing with MBTI: xSxJ traditionalists, especially when they are intolerant and hold beliefs that have no rational basis, so there are certain kinds of organizations where those sorts of people tend to congregate that it is better off for everyone involved if I just avoid.
4) Communicate economically: IMHO a large part of the utility of any personality typing system is that it gives people the ability to describe someone or themselves in a very succinct and systematized manner (I find that the descriptive utility may exceed the predictive utility). Otherwise we might have to use examples that are even more poorly defined (and often highly judgemental) such as "he's a nerd" or "he's a rocket scientist" or "she has the attention span of a gnat" or "she's like..." <some TV or book character that you've never heard of because your interests are totally different than the speaker; repeat until a common reference example is found or until someone runs out of patience or stamina>. Reading my FA Profile text and a few of my longer Journals would probably allow someone to 'understand' me as an individual better than the brief labels that are allocated by the various systems, but reading all that material would probably take someone an hour (and a LOT of patience if they are very different from my type) and it takes up quite a bit of space, compared to saying that according to the MBTI I am an "INTJ" or in Socionics I am probably a "LII", or "1001" for the ultimate in binary geekery that I've seen in a system. However, I'm not going to list my personality type as "1001" on my FA homepage because that wouldn't be very helpful for most people and the purpose of listing my four letter type is to... wait for it... communicate economically.
Comments and Disclaimers:
In general, most of the personality type systems are designed to describe 'normal' behaviors, they are not psychiatric diagnosis tools to identify 'abnormal' or clinical behaviors. With a lot (perhaps all) of the systems and types a person's culture, education, choice of ethics, philosophy, politics, profession, interests, intelligence, etc. can make a significant difference in how the type is expressed; 'personality' is very complex and multi-faceted. All the personality type systems are MODELS of reality, they aren't reality; they're all simplistic for describing something as complex as an organic neural net and thus present only partial truths and generalizations. The design of the systems themselves are inherently limited by how typical humans take in, process and remember information, for instance 2 to 5 factors and/or 4 to 32 'stereotypes' or 'archetypes' are about the practical limits for a system that is going to be understandable and useful to a normal human. While someone could produce a system that has two dozen factors and/or eight thousand 'stereotypes' (or eight billion, or eight hundred trillion), it wouldn't be especially helpful for communicating any useful information to other humans (however for AI's that may be more useful).
IMHO none of the systems I've encountered are perfect and some fit certain people better than others, in many systems I've found that listing my top few choices among the various 'stereotypes' or 'archetypes' can be more useful than just listing my top one result. I also haven't encountered a system that involves some form of self-report test or evaluation by another person that is so utterly random that it is essentially "a Chinese fortune cookie" or the equivalent of a horoscope based on birth time/date/season/year or perhaps the letters in someone's given name, in any system with a dozen or so stereotypes that are properly differentiated from each other there will be a few that resemble me and a few that are totally unlike me. I'm not a zealot for any particular system. I've found that it is helpful to be familiar with more than one system (don't learn just one) because that makes me better aware of the strengths and weaknesses of different systems and encourages me to not rely too much on any particular one.
Just because I use the terminology of a system does NOT mean that I believe everything that may be associated with that system, for instance some system (or particular adherents of a system) may claim that the personality traits it measures are dichotomies rather than continuum, or perhaps that they are inborn and unchangeable, or conversely that personality traits are entirely behaviors/habits that can be changed; my use of the terminology of a system may simply be an attempt to communicate in a mutually understood manner that does not involve trying to reference popular celebrities.
My Humors:
Since the field of personality typing dates back to the 'Four Humors' described by the Greek physician Hippocrates (~460–370BC) which would become the Humorism of ancient and medieval medicine, I thought I'd become a hypocrite and list four humors of my own invention:
'Socratestein': (Possibly pronounced Sok-ra-tuh-stein) A sarcastic 'type' name for people who want to endlessly debate the meanings of the words used by any system (e.g. what is 'extroverted' or 'neurotic'). The name of this 'type' is formed by the combination of the names Socrates (the ancient Greek philosopher who was a contemporary of Hippocrates and got himself executed in 399BC for being a jerk like this and "impiety and corrupting the youth") and Ludwig Wittgenstein (an Austrian philosopher who wrote an entire book that 'proved' that discussing abstract words and philosophical propositions was meaningless in any language). Requesting a definition is reasonable and questioning the meaning of the words for a while is one thing, but endlessly questioning, arguing, and debating about them is another (although ”that depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is”). Socrates demonstrated and Wittgenstein 'proved' that words about abstract concepts are impossible to define. Basically this is someone who is an aggressive, combative skeptic (or perhaps a Pyrrhonist). IMHO, the best response may be to tell them to read Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus and either refute it or comply with it. Hypothesis: This may have a statistical correlation to the MBTI: NT temperament (especially xNTP) and possibly to hip measurement. It might also be a tactic used by narcissistic know-it-alls to attack and belittle other people's knowledge or opinions, since it works on any abstract subject.
'Snowflayke': (Possibly pronounced Snow-flake) A completely unique and sui generis person who is in a category by themselves. A very sarcastic 'type' for all of those people who don't want to be typed because they think that they are completely unique and don't want to be 'pigeonholed' or categorized in any manner based on any factor in any system -- so why not categorize them all together. A common characteristic of this 'type' is that they start whining and complaining (or silently sulking) almost as soon as any personality typing system is mentioned. Some of them may hold the belief that being 'typed' will somehow harm or change them, sort of like that idea about how someone taking a photograph of you will 'steal your soul'. Hypothesis: This may have a statistical correlation to the MBTI: NF temperament (especially xNFP) and possibly to water content... or to narcissism.
'Psychoartist': (Possibly pronounced S-eye-ko-ar-teeest) Not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but a psychoarteest. Someone who suggests that only a highly trained and experienced professional (typically themselves and any other professionals who agree with them, but not highly trained professionals who don't agree with them) is qualified to discuss 'personality' or make any recommendations to people. I may be unqualified to have any opinion on the subject but IMHO that is taking psychology out of the realm of science and making it an art form, and I don't have any desire to go to a 'postmodern industrial psychoartist' for recommendations on how to live my life. Yeah, my sarcasm is dripping here or perhaps that is just an excess of black bile, maybe I should go donate platelets again to get rid of some of that. Hypothesis: This may have a strong statistical correlation to the MBTI: N and J preferences and possibly to the number of letters following their names and those of their references, or maybe to their potential score on the Narcissism Personality Inventory.
'Skeptypical': (Possibly pronounced S-kept-type-ic-al) A less sarcastic 'type' that desribes anyone who is skeptical of all personality typing systems, which may be due to knowledge of the difficulty in repeating social psychology research. Hypothesis: This may have a statistical correlation to the MBTI: NT temperament and inversely correlated with belief in the supernatural and how frequently they read horoscopes.
'Ad Hominem': Not a 'type', this is the name of a logical fallacy (Google it for examples). Applies to anyone who wants to discuss the characteristics of the PEOPLE who created a system, or of those who use or reference a system, rather than discuss the system itself. Since it is a logical fallacy its use in a critique is generally considered a very weak argument that indicates the lack of any better or valid argument and a lack of professionalism (or a surfeit of elitism). To be charitable, some of the people who do this may be attempting to point out the philosophical difference between Truth and Knowledge (a branch of philosophy called epistemology).
[The main reason for this Journal (other than to make 'type junkies' smile or giggle) is that the nuclear family that I was born into contains individuals displaying several of the four humors I describe above, which has resulted in me being nervous and defensive about discussing the issue of personality, personality traits, personality tests, or personality types without first making excessive disclaimers in an attempt to avoid the last item above being applied to me as well. Since I listed my personality types according to several systems on my FA Profile page, creating this Journal gave me something to link to that helps better explain my thoughts about using such systems.]
Summary and Conclusions:
TL;DR -- Personality typing is difficult and possibly meaningless. The author is a jack
Next Steps:
My next Journal on this subject may actually contain information about particular personality types and tests.
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